Home Energy Assistant program administrator sentenced to four years for $22,000 fraud; another administrator pleads guilty to stealing $40,000 from same program

WOODBURY — A Paulsboro woman who formerly worked as a local administrator of the New Jersey Home Energy Assistance Program was sentenced Friday to four years in state prison for defrauding the program of more than $22,000 by filing false applications to obtain benefits, Attorney General Paula T. Dow said.

In addition, a second former local administrator of the program pleaded guilty to stealing over $40,000 in program benefits through the submission of fraudulent benefit applications.

Denise Nicole Johnson, 37, was sentenced by Superior Court Judge M. Christine Allen-Jackson. Johnson pleaded guilty on Jan. 18 to official misconduct, admitting that she defrauded the HEA program of $22,980 by filing nine false applications to obtain benefits. She filed two of the applications by entering false information into the program’s computer system while employed as an aide in the Paulsboro Office of Tri-County Community Action, a non-profit contracted by the state Department of Community Affairs to administer the HEA program in Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties.

Johnson was ordered to pay full restitution and is permanently barred from public employment in New Jersey.

Also Friday, Lynette Bagby, 40, of Paulsboro, pleaded guilty before Allen-Jackson to a pre-indictment accusation charging her with theft by deception. Bagby admitted that, while working as an HEA aide and later an HEA supervisor for Tri-County from 2001 to 2008, she processed fraudulent applications in the names of relatives, acquaintances and others, which generated $45,946 in fraudulent benefits for herself and others. The state will recommend that she be sentenced to 364 days in jail and a term of probation. She would pay full restitution under the plea and would be permanently barred from public employment in New Jersey. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 23.

“Four defendants have now been sentenced to prison as a result of our investigations into fraud in this assistance program,” said Dow.

As a result of the investigations by the Division of Criminal Justice Corruption Bureau, two other women who were local administrators of the HEA program and a Paulsboro-based heating oil supplier were previously sentenced to state prison. In addition, charges are pending against a man who served as a local HEA administrator in Atlantic County.

The HEA program is administered by the Department of Community Affairs and local agencies contracted by the DCA. The HEA program encompasses two separate programs, the federally funded Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the state-funded Universal Service Fund Program (USF). The LIHEAP program provides direct financial assistance to beneficiaries in the form of payments to utility companies and to fuel vendors to help low-income households meet the cost of home heating and medically necessary cooling. The USF program assists such households by providing credits against their natural gas and electric bills.